| Panel debates possibilities for soybean meal changes |
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Panel debates possibilities for soybean meal changes
By MATTHEW D. ERNST
Missouri Correspondent
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Selling soy meal from beans with different energy and amino acid traits could add more value to U.S. soy, and the day may come when meal is traded on the basis of the animal species it is best-suited to feed. But any changes toward “value-added meal” must be embraced by the whole soy supply chain, according to a panel discussion among soy industry and innovation experts at Soy CONNECTIONS, in St. Louis Dec. 10.
Animal feeding has grown to include lower-quality proteins – namely, dried distillers grain with solubles (DDGS) and canola meal combined with synthetic amino acids. The impact on soy meal’s North American market share has been offset by expanding Asian demand.
“But the U.S. can’t rely on that kind of offset for the long term,” according to a discussion background paper.
Poultry and swine producers are the biggest soy meal customers. “As a scientist, I would like to see a soybean meal that has the maximum amount of energy and the amino acids that are tailor-made for the species,” said Neoh Soon-Bin, director of Soon Soon Group, a Malaysia-based integrated grain, feed, oil and oilseed processing firm.
Two farm-level concerns are yield and identity preservation. “Yield drag,” whether actual or perceived, keeps producers from planting new varieties. But soybean breeders say this would be avoided in future new varieties, and the U.S. supply chain is well-positioned to preserve identity, said Jim Call, a Minnesota farmer and outgoing chair of the United Soybean Board (USB). “In the future, we’re probably growing meal specifically for a chicken, or a different type of meal for a hog. And the United States has the ability to do that because we work closely with our crushers,” he said.
But the crusher has to be able to realize value from new varieties, said Chris Nikkel, vice president, Risk Management Oilseeds at Bunge North America. “If there’s a part of the chain from the farmer all the way to the end consumer that feels like there’s no value, the chain is broken. And when the chain’s broken, it fails,” he explained.
Nikkel is more interested in new soy meal characteristics that result in new buyers and more volume. “At the end of the day, I look at it pretty simplistically. Value is about creating more demand, about making the pie bigger,” he said.
One example is in the Philippines, where U.S. soy meal trades at a premium over South American meal. More meal exports allow crushers like Bunge to run facilities at a higher capacity, said Nikkel. “Make the delivery system efficient, that’s key,” he said.
Northern soybeans
A reason behind the interest in adding value to soybean meal is the expansion of soybean acreage in the upper Midwest – the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and northern Iowa. Soybeans grown in that region are perceived as being lower in protein. That can result in price docks in a market that characterizes soybean meal on crude protein, moisture and fiber.
Keith Schrader, Vice chair of the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, outlined a scenario for how different traits could be rewarded. Increasing soybean metabolizable energy by 100 kcal per pound, combined with a 5 percent increase in available amino acids, would add $30 a ton in feeding value to soybean meal, according to a handout he presented.
The problem lies in measuring such characteristics through the value chain. “You cannot get value unless you can measure value,” said Soon-Bin. He said he sells some U.S. soybean meal for a $30 premium – but that is based more on long-term customer experience, where customers see that animals are doing better on U.S. meal, even if they cannot quantify exactly why.
“At the least, you should be able to measure digestible amino acids and metabolizable energy,” said Soon-Bin. “Unless we have a way we can reliably measure it all the way from the chicken back to the soy farmer, along the whole value chain, you cannot get value.”
Roy Brister, director of Nutrition and Feed Milling at Tyson Foods, said the current classification of soy meal by crude protein content suits his firm’s needs. “Energy would be the thing that we would like to see increase in soybean meal,” he told more than 400 soy industry members attending the panel discussion. Showing that soy meal has more energy than other protein sources, he said, could make it more attractive for poultry rations.
Laura Foeller, a soybean producer from Schaller, Iowa, and USB Meal Action Team Chair, asked the panel about possible value-added opportunities for human food. The immediate opportunity, said Soon-Bin, would be characteristics in meat and eggs from animals fed different soybean meal. “I think soybeans have a tremendous potential for nutraceutical use,” he said. “We can use it in animal feed to carry over certain traits to the meat and the eggs. The day in which we can actually use food to reduce the risk of disease is closer than we think.”
CONNECTIONS is a one-day, every-other-year gathering of soybean industry leaders. This year’s event, titled “Ahead of the Curve: Accelerating Soy’s Future,” had the highest attendance ever, with 434 participants. |
| 12/17/2014 |
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